It's a street in Wedgwood with neat one-story houses, trees turning orange for the fall and pumpkins on the lawns.

But on the corner is a blight -- and a sign of the times, neighbors say.

In a scene that the housing-market downturn might bring to other Seattle streets, the former Jewish Community Center that was supposed to be torn down to make room for a new condo development sits shuttered, abandoned and surrounded by a wire fence.

The developer postponed the project until better economic times -- and inevitably, graffiti began covering the walls. White splotches marking neighbors' attempts to paint over the scrawls followed. But new graffiti has since appeared high on the side of the building.

Last week, Stephanie Doll, who lives on the block, stopped to survey the large unintelligible scrawl. "Belb," it said. Or perhaps, "Bel8"

In 2007, a Bellevue-based developer, The Murray Franklyn Family of Companies, announced it was going to build a four-story, 86-unit condo complex at Northeast 86th Street and 35th Avenue Northeast.

The neighborhood never wanted the condo project, Doll said. Residents worried it would overwhelm the single-story houses next door.

But this summer, Doll said neighbors noticed the building just sitting there. The first scrawls that appeared were small and tentative -- as if the vandals wanted to see whether anyone would come clean it up. No one did.

Residents called and e-mailed Murray Franklyn. But there was no response until Sept. 5, when they got an e-mail that infuriated them.

"We will remove the couches and washers and dryers and refrigerators that your neighbors have decided to dump on our property," wrote Murray Franklyn representative Wade Metz in the e-mail provided by the neighbors. "Our current market for being able to sell homes in your area is non-existent or we would have been building our project by now. We vacated the JCC in November ... They left us with a building that could not be re-rented without a substantial amount of work to fix the damage. We have no choice now but to sit and wait for this market to come back. In the meantime, the building will remain empty."

Metz wrote that the company would erect a fence around the building, but he wrote, "We would like to see the community organize a block watch for the neighborhood. It's not my neighbors that are destroying my property, it's yours."

The fence does help a bit, said Tim Lane, who also lives on the street. But no one's come back to clean the new graffiti.

"The fear is if you let one building go, graffiti on the next one gets started," Lane said. "It makes us look like a down-and-out community, which we're not."

A woman who answered the phones at Murray Franklyn's offices Thursday said Metz is no longer with the company. Ron Boscola, who the receptionist said is working on the project, did not return several messages left last week and on Monday.

Although building officials haven't noticed an increase in delayed projects, he said, the economic downturn could very well lead to other delays until the housing market rebounds.

Whether the economic downtown could mean more giant holes left in the ground, or more vandalism at empty buildings such as Wedgwood's former JCC, is hard to tell, he said.

Generally, said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities, vacant buildings attract graffiti. Neighbors complained to the utility, which is responsible for enforcing a city law requiring owners to clean graffiti off their private properties, said Doll.It's a slow process. The city sent a letter to Murray Franklyn Oct. 10 saying there had been a complaint, but it was the first of three notices the city sends before it levies fines. The company does not have to clean it up for conceivably one or two months.

In the meantime, Murray Franklyn has donated cans of paint so that neighbors can paint over the graffiti themselves, Doll said.

But Doll said she and her neighbors continue to wonder why they should have to take care of a problem caused by a development they never wanted.